


Not Dreaming

by AFCastleDefender



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Use, Love, Regret, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:31:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFCastleDefender/pseuds/AFCastleDefender
Summary: The Supreme Leader is hailed by the Resistance to come to the bedside of one of their own who is slipping away. The Force won't help.





	Not Dreaming

Day 13

Despite Ben’s threat to sear his circuits if he did not leave him the hell alone, 3-PO insisted on explaining the five stages of grief. It was, he supposed, the droid’s misguided notion of comfort to assure him that his anger was natural. He had been trying to validate Ben’s feelings since he was old enough to talk. It had never worked then either.

A soft voice and gentle hands had intervened before Ben’s legendary temper took over and damaged the old droid, carefully shuffling him out to the hall, giving him a long series of instructions that would carry him through until this vigil was over.

Ben was grateful for the help, but so far, he had not had the nerve to look her in the eyes to tell her so.

Chewie positioned himself in the corner, whimpering in shared grief, waiting to sing from the dirges common to the tribes of Kashyyyk to mark the passing of a warrior. Dimly, Ben wondered if a dirge had been sung for his father. He had no right to know.

The fact that Chewie had not finished him off the moment the ramp of his shuttle had hit the landing pad was more than he deserved. It would not matter if Chewie did try to murder him after she faded into the Force. Any type of violence would, he was certain, be sweet mercy after the torment of the last two weeks.

Ben was not sure what he would do when it was done, but he knew that he could not go back to the First Order and pretend as if nothing had happened. He passed the time thinking of the easiest means at his disposal. Driving his Silencer into the event horizon of the galaxy’s massive black hole, he decided, was high on the list.

A small but strong feminine hand grasped his shoulder. Its’ comfort was precious and undeserved. Ben had no choice but to shrug off, lost as he was to shame. Yet her hand remained where it was, a constant of each agonizing day, trying to infuse some strength into his body. It was as if she thought that her touch could leach out the acid burn of regret that threatened to raze him to the ground.

He did not want her pity. In the precious minutes left, Ben could not bear her condolences. He wanted to burn.

_Damn the Force._ Always there, pulsing in his veins, taking up the spaces of his cells, it had been happy to make the decisions whether he was willing or no. It was silent now. Over the last twelve standard days, he had argued with it. Begged. Offered deals. The Force remained indifferent to his pain. It had stopped its ebb and flow as if it knew that there was nothing it could do to stop the inexorable slide.

As a result, the ways of the Force had, over these small weeks when it would not be used for her benefit, become just another magical impostor to Ben. He felt its betrayal keenly. With extreme prejudice, he relegated it to the sleight of hand used by buskers and charlatans to fleece tourists in the streets of Canto Bight. There was no integrity in a power that could not be convinced, even by its darkest heart, to help its lightest one.

Yes, Ben could still wield its powers, but why? The Force had abandoned him just as everyone always did. The difference this time was that he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he deserved it. And she would be the one who paid.

Ben thought about the moments after the First Order’s best medical technicians, dragged from the bowels of his command ship to attend this precious patient, told him that there was nothing more they could do. They had recoiled from the volcanic fury in his eyes, clutching their throats in agony, before Finn had rushed them from the room. He had scarcely known he was choking them, but the former Stormtrooper obviously knew what to expect from a cornered Kylo Ren.

That ugly scene could have been minutes ago or an entire day cycle for all he knew. Time had long since marched from a steady beat to a syncopation that would not allow Ben to catch his breath. He doubted he would ever draw an easy one again once she was gone.

He also had no idea how many standard minutes had passed since the diehards of the Resistance had filed in to say their farewells. Every one of them had paused to meet Ben’s gaze, their eyes red with impotent rage, bottomless grief, and withering blame. These were the ones she loved. The ones who knew her best.

He shouldn’t be here. _How could he stay away?_

When he received their transmission through a public channel thirteen days ago, his lieutenants had urged him not to go. They had laughed at the “desperation” of the remnants of a Resistance that, in the end, had resisted nothing of importance while killing so many who mattered to them. Reaching out through the Force to validate their message, Ben noticed immediately that her Light had dimmed, and he had been seized with overwhelming panic to get to her as quickly as a ship could carry him.

Dispassionately, Ben wondered how in the Force she survived the battles of that day only to be brought to this moment where a routine journey to acquire supplies could destroy her? The universe, as he well knew, had no sense of justice. It was a fickle and uncaring bastard.

He had killed Hux for this. Ben could at least feel some dull satisfaction in that. In his haste to arrive at this ramshackle base, he had simply landed his shuttle on Coruscant, marched down the ramp, where Armitage Hux was waiting to gloat and interrupted his self-congratulations with a swipe of red saber. Bisected, he had fallen in a heap with the same fleshy thud as Snoke.

Thirty seconds and Ben was back in his shuttle, speeding to this distant place with its rusted halls and shadowy caverns of cold durasteel.

During the trip he had tried to imagine a galaxy where she no longer inhabited a corporeal form. The strength of her life force was such that he could not wrap his head around it, no matter how many hours he had alone with his thoughts. He refused to accept that the limited efforts of the Resistance were everything that could be done. He thought the First Order medical personnel superior. 

Poe Dameron had greeted him that first day with a taut jaw and stilted words. “We have been told that no amount of bacta or surgical intervention can repair damage as extensive as what she sustained in the ion cannon’s blast. But we tried, man,” Poe tried to assure him, the breath rushing out of his lungs, breaking with the angry formality of moments ago. “She…uh, she is sleeping _comfortably_. She’s being given nutrition, but not help with respiration. She isn’t…” The pilot let out a sigh and rubbed his face with rough hands. “She isn’t in any pain…Ben… _if that helps_.”

Ben. They were boys the last time Poe Dameron had called him by that name.

That conversation set them on a path where they waited while she slipped away. The actions on the base continued. Day cycle faded to night cycle, again and again, blending. The first three days he had stayed at her bedside, meditating in place of sleep, cradling her in his arms, threatening her if she didn’t open her eyes, uncaring of the needs of his own body until she had come in again and threatened to force-feed him if he didn’t get up and take care of himself.

Exhausted, he had given in. Checked in with his government. Showered. Slept. Hoped. Despaired. It became a routine that carried him through every day. 

Ben closed his eyes as his mind recoiled in agony for the thousandth time. If he could only go back and change his actions. If he could change his words. He would take her anger. He would bear her disappointment if she would just open her eyes and speak to him. Ben may have rejected the ghosts of his old life, but it seemed that they would just keep chasing him and inviting new specters to haunt him. 

Ben opened his eyes to find that an eerie blue glow had overtaken the half-light. Across the bed from him was one of those same ghosts he had tried to banish: Luke Skywalker. Outlined by glowing molecules, the man he had never really battled on Crait was watching the figure in the bed, reaching a transparent hand toward her as Ben himself did when directing the Force.

_No._

After days of holding the turmoil and grief inside, Ben felt himself lose all semblance of control. He began to hyperventilate as his raw and torn psyche realized why his uncle had appeared.

_He had come for her._

Struggling to breathe through involuntary sobs and choked sounds of anguish that spun a rifled passage through his throat, he felt the ever-present soft hand that had never left his shoulder joined by another, embracing him as he rocked back and forth, tears pouring from his eyes.

“Please,” he begged, grabbing the soft hands around his shoulders, needing someone to anchor him to the ground before he fell away from gravity altogether.

“Please, Uncle. Please don’t take her from me.” Ben hung his head, unable to watch Luke call her home.

“Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _Please,_ ” he begged over and over.

Chewie leaped forward to Ben’s side, hurling threats at his former friend. Begging him not to hurt Han’s son again. Demanding that Luke move away from the Small One, as he called her.

Ben could not see the face of the woman who held him, but he could hear the harsh words she threw at the ghost of his former master and would-be murderer.

“No! You cannot be here, Luke. _Not you._ I will not allow you to hurt him anymore. If you cannot help, you cannot stay! _Anyone_ but you. Send _our father_ to take her if you must. Just.. _.no more._ ”

Ben could feel his tenuous hold on sanity slip further away as Luke Skywalker stood frozen, his arm still extended toward Rey, ignoring their words as if he could not hear their pleas. His mother just continued to rock in time with him, telling him that all would be well, just as she had when he had awoken from nightmares as a child. She was trying to comfort him again in this, the worst of his nightmares come to life. Luke Skywalker had come to avenge his temple. 

“Whatever happens, Ben,” his mother said in his ear, “I will never let you go again. You are loved, son. You are not alone. _I am here._ ”

Ben clung to her, unable to stop the gut-churning sobs that sprung from his mouth or the shudders of his body as he waited for Luke to steal away the woman he loved, finally exacting an act of revenge that would decimate him.

“No, Rey,” Ben begged again, turning his pleas to the beautiful and still face of his Rey. “Don’t go with him. _Please_ stay with me or...just…let me come with you.”

Ben ignored his mother’s denial of those words. Nodding his head wildly, he hoped that wherever she was, Rey would hear him. “ _Gods!_ I need to go with you. _I’m so sorry, Sweetheart._ I’m sorry for all of it. I should have gone with you that day. I should have done what you asked. I don’t want any of it without you.”

Once he started imploring her, he could scarcely find a way to stop, believing that so long as he kept talking to her, she would stay.

“ _Please don’t go without me._ I love you…so much, Rey.”

Leia Organa-Solo began to sob, losing her iconic control, unable to bear the agony she heard in the voice of her child as he continued to babble at his girl.

Finn and Poe rushed in, no doubt believing from the sounds coming from the room that Ben had lost his mind at Rey’s last breath. They watched with awe as Luke Skywalker’s blue glow enveloped their injured friend, gaping at what they could not understand, clinging to one another in sorrow.

Unable to reach Rey or get through to his uncle, Ben Solo slid to the floor in despair and resignation, pressing his lips to the work-roughened hand of the young woman he loved. His pride obliterated, Ben knelt in supplication before the Force.

“Please,” he begged once more.

With a sudden flash of blue, the room was still. The faint smell of ozone was all the evidence that remained of the ghostly visitor who had come to claim Rey.

Unable to raise his eyes to her beloved form, afraid to see her disappear into the ether, or to find the halt of the instruments that measured her heart rate stilled forever, Ben let his feelings spill from his eyes. A small, keening sound reported through the room over and over, a noise, Ben realized on some level was coming from him.

A disbelieving cry suddenly rose from his mother and Chewie, forcing Ben’s eyes to the bed where he expected to see the fading form of his love but instead found dazed hazel eyes barely open, searching for his own.

_“Ben...” came a choked whisper, “...dreaming?”_

Ben practically launched himself at Rey, raining gentle kisses upon her face and lips, his tears dropping to her sunken cheeks.

_We all square now, kid?_ came a familiar voice in his head, the Force suddenly pulsing through his veins once more.

Ben did not pause in his efforts to shower Rey with his love, but he did answer Luke Skywalker.

_Thank you, Uncle Luke._

_Anytime, kid. If you won’t mind some advice, you won’t waste any time marrying that girl._

Ben pulled back from Rey, tenderly brushing her hair away from her face.

_No, sir. I certainly won’t. If she’ll have me…forgive me…_ Ben wasn’t so sure that was possible. How could Rey love him after all he had done?

_Well, I can’t help you there. That one’s on you. Don't forget that she believed in you from the first. At least you've got that going for you. See you around, kid._

Ben Solo stared down into the dazed eyes of the woman he loved and smiled.

No, Sweetheart,” he whispered, “not dreaming.”

**Author's Note:**

> Friends, I honestly have no idea what this is. I don't know if this is a one-shot. I don't know if it has legs. You tell me what you'd like to see!
> 
> Anyway, thoughts? Did you think it was Leia who was dying? What about Ben's inner monologue? Our poor, tortured boy. 
> 
> For those few, faithful, patient readers, thanks for being patient with me! I am finishing Humility right now. It should be ready for publication soon. Thrust and Parry's update is also in progress. I honestly needed a break for a while. I let some of the fans on social media get in my head and make me not want to write anything else. I owe you, me, and the stories more than that, so thanks for being patient. I will finish them! 
> 
> This came to me in the shower one morning. LOL. It demanded to be written.


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